


Patterns

by roguefaerie (samidha)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Comment Fic, Gen, One Shot Collection, Rating May Change, Some Comment Fic, Tags May Change
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-25
Updated: 2018-11-20
Packaged: 2019-05-28 13:04:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15049655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samidha/pseuds/roguefaerie
Summary: Sam, Dean, and their patterns.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Ruminations and free writes go here. (No meta, all fiction.) Some kind of collection of one shots that will all go here when written.

1, Most of all, Sam is tired, and when Sam is tired, it spills out. Onto Dean, largely. 

It happens before Sam is even aware of it, and most of the time Dean just takes it in. He deals and lets it finish.

Dean lets it be this way because there isn’t really another way programmed into him. In the end, Dean isn’t in charge of Sam, he only deals with Sam and all the rest of it.

This is as certain as Dean and burgers. As certain as black car paint and gun oil.

Some things that are certain are the things Sam carries with him. So he tries sometimes, and Dean can’t fault him for trying, either.

They’ll always fall back into step, though. Even a lock-step that’s off-kilter.

It’s something even the people around them can come to expect. Or take advantage of, sometimes.

A known quantity. That’s Sam and Dean.

Until the very end. Something true.

2\. Inside the outside of the Winchester circle, which is about where Bobby would reside, it’s possible to see lots, but not all of this. It’s not something that they will allow.

And so there are secret places, like the diner in Wyoming. And that one field in Kansas where Dean lost it on the way out of the state.

(Of course he did. Of course anyone would.

It was Kansas, after all. That’s the way Kansas works for them.)

And log cabins that are nowhere. And all the places where Sam puked on the sides of highways from headaches.

All the headaches and all the salads. But Dean doesn’t tease him.

They don’t tease each other when it really hurts. When it really stings of home.

3\. Inside the inside, sometimes even they don’t know what’s up. Dean is suicidal before he realizes, or Sam’s nagging fear of being a monstrosity in the making rears its ugly head.

Then they are lost for a time, but there’s always the lock-step, and they’ll settle back into it. One of these days.

People will count on it. They will wait on it. 

Those who know them across the country, in dive bars and at motel check-in desks. Even “the neighbors” around the bunker.

They are known, even when people aren’t aware of who they’re seeing, exactly. The Winchesters leave a mark where they step.

So it is. And so shall it ever be.


	2. The Vending Machine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Lucky us. (Fic Promptly). Drabble.

"Sammy!" Dean crowed, all eight years old of him, as he barged back into the motel room. "There was extras stuck together in the vending machine!"

Sam looked up, petulent, a little scared. Dean had showed him a monster, but it was fake, it was totally make believe from a movie and that was fine, right? It was a tiny something in comparison to what was _actually_ out there in the dark.

But Sammy was spooked.

"I don't like Funyuns, Dean. You can have it."

Dean deflated. "It's your dinner, germ face.” Resigned.

“You’re more hungry than me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it took me a bit to get back to this. I was in several challenges and completing a longer work and it can be hard to focus on one shots when in the middle of bigger projects.


	3. Significance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things that are significant to Sam and Dean.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pre-Series stuff. Implied relationships of various types. If you see the subtext of one of them, it's there on purpose.

When Dean makes Sam spagghetios, it’s significant. 

It’s food. And by virtue of being older, sometimes Dean has to make them, from the hot plate or not, and they’re grateful. Or Sam would be grateful, if the significant could register with him at age two or three.

But no matter what Sam actually thinks, he knows that if Dean’s there, he’ll get food, and if the man is there, all he wants to do is cry.

There’s something wrong. There’s something wrong with the man.

And Dean is the provider, and no matter what he does or what happens, he always will be. Sam knows that.

*~*~*

When he’s older, he knows something else too. He knows it shouldn’t be this way. He knows hiding his school books, his intermittent report cards, hiding school shouldn’t be a thing. He knows that parents are supposed to do more than lock their kids in single rooms.

He knows, but he’s not sure if Dean knows.

He’s not sure if Dean knows.

And Dean is not coming with him.

And that’s all Sam needs to know, sometimes. 

The thing he has to keep his eye on.

The thing he has to remember.

If he goes, Dean is not coming with him.

And it’s not that he doesn’t love Dean.

It’s self-preservation. It’s Sam’s spark.

It’s significant.

*~*~*

When Sam is with Jess, or Dean is with Cassie, it’s some of the first moments they’re with another person who isn’t--the man.

The man who shaped everything.

The man who helped keep food scarce, and bullets plentiful.

The man who couldn’t be a parent, but still managed to take Dean with him.

These are significant things.

Significant. That’s the word. Maybe not some other words, words they have no room for.

Words Jess and Cassie know.

Words other men would know.

They tumble into people’s beds, they explore on their own but they can’t connect because what they know is things are scarce and so is love, and so are phone calls, and the ability to ask for favors, or anything they need.

*~*~*

Sam keeps a stash of devil dogs in the back of a drawer because they’re the only thing that tastes normal to him sometimes.

*~*~*

Dean practices dialing Sam’s number but hanging up, never engaging, because that’s as much as it will ever be again.

They made their choices, but they weren’t sides. They were adults, but they were broken, and all the things they had to choose from weren’t safe. Every single, significant one.

*~*~*

And so there they are, lines in the sand already drawn by pain and fear and Having. Nothing. Else.


	4. The Death Is Not the End

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fic promptly prompt: any/any, the death is not the end. Comment Fic.

The death is not the end. It's never the end. It's never been that, it's always been the beginning.

The beginning of tumbling down the rabbit hole of hunting. Homeless, mostly, though they don't say that. The beginning of a new partnership between the brothers. The beginning of patterns. the beginning of space, and also the end of space between them, the kind other people had. The beginning of isolation, and barely-tamped-down terror. 

The beginning is fire, death and fire, and death, and death, and death.

They save some. They don't save them all.

They can't. It's not possible.

The longer they go at this the less monsters seem like singular problems and the more they realize they're an inherent part of the fabric of their universe. They don't say it in big words. But they know it.

The death is not the end. It is the beginning.

This is true for any of their fallen, though openly they grieve for some. Charlie and Bobby and of course, forever, Mary. Even when she's--well, the Mom Dean knows doesn't come back. Peanut butter sandwiches and pre-school are not a thing you can get back. Life without fire wouldn't be a hunter's life.

The death is not the end. It's never the end. It's always the beginning.


End file.
